A COUNCIL auditor who claims he was silenced and denied documents he needed will appear before a tribunal today, claiming constructive dismissal.

Former Flintshire County Council auditor Andy Sutton will make allegations under the " whistleblowing act".

Mr Sutton has not worked since he took sick leave in August 2000 after a major bust-up with the authority.

He claimed he was denied important documents to carry out his work, which involved auditing council financial dealings.

He was criticised by the authority after he took the unusual step of taking his grievances direct to councillors.

Even after District Auditor Ceri Stradling produced a Public Interest Report into his allegations, Mr Sutton, of Wrexham, voiced his concern directly to Assembly Finance Minister Edwina Hart, claiming the report had failed to deal with all of his accusations. Mr Sutton and Flintshire County Council today begin an unprecedented three week industrial tribunal hearing at Shrewsbury into his accusations.

Apart from claiming he was effectively dismissed as head of the county's internal audit section, Mr Sutton will be making 38 "protected disclosures" under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

These allegations include the making of an illegal #21,000 redundancy payment to a homes manager on Deeside who retired, but then was re-hired by the authority. Two senior officers were suspended and later returned to work. Although the District Auditor said the money should be repaid, the Assembly has since declared the matter closed and the money is still outstanding.

There are also allegations about the purchase of a farm in Cheshire, made by Flintshire to relocate a farmer in River Lane, Saltney, whose land was needed for a jobs scheme which Flintshire lost to another authority.

Mr Stradling concluded: "The River Lane development scheme was not well managed, resulting in its failure after the commitment of limited capital resources."

In a report in January 2001, Mr Stradling said unless there were valid legal reasons Mr Sutton and his team should be allowed access to the documents they wanted.

The authority argued Mr Sutton never had authority to see all the documents he wanted, and said he had failed to explain why he needed to see some documents. They also attacked the way he broke with protocol and wrote directly to every councillor.